FATHERS AND CHILDREN
each of the characters we have introduced is
doing in the present, the actual present We
are ready to satisfy him.
Anna Sergyevna has recently made a mar-
riage, not of love but of good sense, with one of
the future leaders of Russia, a very clever man,
a lawyer, possessed of vigorous practical sense, $
strong will, and remarkable fluency—still young,
good-natured, and cold as ice. They live in the
greatest harmony together, and will live per-
haps to attain complete happiness . . . perhaps
love. The Princess K------is dead, forgotten
the day of her death. The Kirsanovs, father
and son, live at Maryino; their fortunes are
beginning to mend. Arkady has become zealous
in the management of the estate, and the
' farm' now yields a fairly good income. Nik-
olai Petrovitch has been made one of the
mediators appointed to carry out the emancipa-
tion reforms, and works with all his energies ; he
is for ever driving about over his district; delivers
long speeches (he maintains the opinion that
the peasants ought to be * brought to compre-
hend things,3 that is to say, they ought to be
reduced to a state of quiescence by the constant
repetition of the same words) ; and yet, to tell
the truth, he does not give complete satisfaction
either to the refined gentry, who talk with ckic>
ar depression of th« emancipation (pronouncing
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